Since 2010, we have partnered with Pepsico to
address many diverse strategic challenges… from determining how to utilize
left-over orange peels at Tropicana, to exploring and reinvigorating mango
products in India; From constructing meaningful long term R+D strategies for
global beverages and Frito Lay, to most recently, creating an overarching plan
for digital capability building.

Challenge

Pepsi India gave us a one word scope: MANGO.
Indian consumers love mango, and Pepsi wanted to expand their current mango
beverage brand, Slice, to capture market with other beverages or food. Slice
had lost its focus, and simply wasn’t appropriately articulating (or receiving,
for that matter) the Indian love of mango! They had tons of ideas but weren’t
sure which to pick. And, there was this nagging problem that you couldn’t get
high-quality raw product year round.

Our Approach

We used our Rapid Brewery approach and brought together a cross-functional team from food science to finance and marketing to packaging to explore mango in a two day working session.

Utilizing a build-test-build structure, we came up with and built out opportunity areas in the morning, and tested them with early and later adopters that night. Early adopters hone in on the best value propositions and explain them to later adopters – giving us greater clarity and fantastically targeted marketing language.

On day two, we prioritized and refined the opportunity areas based on consumer insight, and tested the strengthened concepts that night.

Key Insight: Consumers were really passionate and knowledgeable about mango, each able to articulate their favorite varietal from their region of origin. But, due to increasing urbanization, they often weren’t able to get them.

Outcome

So, we created products focused on provenance.
Three mango varietals from three regions – Alphonso, Dusheri, and Bangnapali.
When mango supply ran out – so did the product – creating a premium offer
rooted in scarcity.

At last, Slice captured the excitement and
pleasure of mango in drink form. The Pepsi team did an incredible job launching
the new Slice products with an engaging marketing campaign featuring Bollywood
star Karina Keif. The product was a huge success and created a mindset in Pepsi
that was no longer tethered to a stable supply chain.